Song Review: Kim Sejeong [Gugudan] – Flower Road

On November 23, Sejeong embarked on a new journey as a soloist (also as a part of a music channel project known as Jelly Box by her label Jellyfish Entertainment) with the release of Flower Road. This time, not as a member of Gugudan. Not as a member of I.O.I as well, but as Kim Sejeong. This also marks the first time a member from Gugudan and I.O.I to promote as a soloist.

“I’ll make sure that you only walk on the flower road”

Background:

Flower Road is a song made known during her “Talents for Sale” days where she was one of the cast for the KBS show. In Episode 8, Sejeong and her fellow I.O.I member Jung Chaeyeon teamed up with Block B’s Zico to produce a song on the spot as to showcase Zico’s credibility and talent in songwriting. Inspired by the girls’ hardship as an idol where they work relentlessly to achieve their dreams and success while missing their parents at the same time, Zico came up with Flower Road (at that time, it was incomplete). A witty homage to Sejeong’s famous quote from MNET’s Produce 101, “Let’s walk on a flowery path”.

Review:

Flower Road is a ballad song, and the song intro’s sounds exactly just like what you thought it would be. Nothing fancy but still going to give you a nice welcoming for a warm journey throughout the song. Or in common Korean expression, it will give you a goosebumps. Though that won’t linger for long. Like most Korean ballads, Flower Road was composed with storytelling in mind. It focuses more on pronunciation and enunciation of each word in the lyrics rather than the background music. This give listeners more room to enjoy listening to Sejeong’s husky and sweet vocal. It’s a plus to listeners who can understand Korean but those who don’t can still enjoy it nevertheless. Music can transcend all kind of barriers such as language and origin, it is all down to each person’s preferences to it and how they perceive it to their liking and vice versa.

A song about a love between a grateful child and her mother who lived through hard time together, and manage to overcome all hardships together and bring them to what they are now, Flower Road’s chorus is definitely the focal point of the song. It’s a climactic chorus that emphasize on storytelling in previous verses as to show us that they’ve made it, like a happy ending. The chorus may reminds us a bit of Taeyang’s Eyes Nose Lips, which at the same time identical to hundreds more songs. A swift reminder to us all that nothing is original any longer (Hallyu* itself is a mixture of many things) but that does not mean it is not a good thing.

Overall, Flower Road is a great ballad song produced by Zico that manage to capture Sejeong’s heartfelt emotion through her sultry voice and soothing music. A meaningful song with great message that love is not all about grinding between a man and a woman or of the same kind, but it can be anything and in this case between a daughter and her mother and their memories together.

Replayability – Green

Flower Road is an excellent song for a mood swinging playlist, and act as a chain breaker to many fast beat, synth pop songs offered by other K-Pop artists

Originality – Green

It’s a ballad song so something new is hard to come by but extra point to Zico and Sejeong for not opting to unnecessary high belting and out-of-place ad libbing

p/s (1): *Hallyu means Korean cultural wave. Hallyu Wave is an incorrect term despite of its common usage in writings and conversations